The present invention relates generally to financial transactions including a method for a borrower to evaluate and/or obtain financing, e.g., a loan or a credit card.
Shopping for financing (e.g., a loan, such as a mortgage) can be a complicated time-consuming process. The mortgage industry has been slow to empower borrowers in order to save them time, make their lives easier, and help them determine their best loan options. Because of this, borrowers, and in particular, credit-impaired borrowers, are often overcharged. The Coalition of Responsible Lending has stated that ten million borrowers have been overcharged up-front fees of $11,000,000,000, which equates to ten million borrowers being overcharged an average of $1,100 each. The practice of offering borrowers loans at rates that are higher than warranted by the credit history of the borrower is sometimes referred to as predatory lending. Predatory lending is a very difficult and challenging problem to recognize in practice as many lenders may use procedures that conceal the nature of the predatory practices.
There are newspaper or Internet referral sites which publish interest rates for one or more lenders. However, the user must interact individually with each prospective lender. It is very time consuming for a borrower to investigate each of the potential lenders. Furthermore, each prospective lender typically runs a credit report on the borrower, causing there to be multiple inquiries on the borrower's credit report. The basis for an adverse decision is often unknown.
There is thus a need for a way to help a borrower to avoid predatory lending and paying higher than justified loan rates.